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Protecting the Human and Constitutional Rights of Those Impacted by the Prison SystemSat, 23 Dec 2017 00:36:53 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3http://fairchanceproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/cropped-FC-Logosmall-32x32.jpgReports – Fair Chance Projecthttp://fairchanceproject.com
323249614664New report by the Justice Policy Institute seeks to rethink America’s approach to violence to combat (over-)incarcerationhttp://fairchanceproject.com/reports/new-report-justice-policy-institute-seeks-rethink-americas-approach-violence-combat
Sat, 27 Aug 2016 21:59:37 +0000http://fairchanceproject.com/?p=865Defining Violence: reducing incarceration by rethinking America’s approach to violence A report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), August 2016 Read the whole report here. SUMMARY From the White House to statehouses around the country, there is more support than ever for criminal

SUMMARY
From the White House to statehouses around the country, there is more support than ever for criminal justice reform and efforts to reduce the imprisonment of more than 2 million people— what some call “mass incarceration.”

While the national conversation and policy reforms have focused on reducing the incarceration of people convicted of nonviolent offenses, just under half the people in prison have been convicted of a violent crime. It is impossible for the U.S. to be able to lower its incarceration rate significantly without changing how the justice system treats violent crimes.

There are signs that the justice reform approach may be broadening to include a different approach to violence. The 50-percent drop in the number of youth confined or placed out-of-the-home and reforms spurred on by the Supreme
Court around juvenile life without parole now mean that some young people convicted of violent crimes are at home, or are coming home, sooner. From California to Michigan to New York, changes to parole decisions are being offered to shift away from simply considering “the nature of the crime” to whether someone may reoffend if released.

Mandatory minimums sentences covering some violent offenses are being chipped away at. When faced with spikes
in violent crime, some city leaders are rejecting approaches that simply rely on enhanced penalties and are proposing to make bigger investments in communities where crime is a problem.

These modest steps are a starting place, but they need to be tempered with some realities: The latest surveys show only a 1 percent reduction in the national prison population along with a slight increase in jailed populations. The United States still has the highest incarceration rate and the largest prison population in the world. And many of the proposals that are pushing for a better approach to violence prevention were not enacted in 2016.

The data is clear: America will not significantly reduce incarceration unless the justice system changes its approach to violence. But this is a complicated political and systems reform issue.

When elected officials support bills that focus solely on nonviolent crimes, they can point to polling and voter- enacted ballot initiatives that show that the public supports their agenda. In some jurisdictions, policymakers have vocally rejected justice reform bills and ballot initiatives if there is a hint that someone convicted of a violent crime might benefit from the change. When people have been the victims of a violent crime, they may want to see that person locked up. And scholars have noted that if Americans want to treat the root causes of violence in the communities most affected by serious crime, it will require a significant investment of public resources—more than what we could currently “reinvest” from downsizing or closing prisons and jails.

To address this complicated issue, we need to unpack how the justice system responds to violent crimes, starting with how these crimes and behaviors are defined, and how that affects prison populations. Who defines a behavior as
violent, how the justice system treats these behaviors, and whether the approach to violent crime makes us safer needs to be scrutinized if we are ever going to make meaningful reductions in the use of incarceration.

– How violent offenses are categorized from place to place: An act may be defined as a violent crime in one place and as a nonviolent crime somewhere else. The law may define something as a nonviolent crime, but a corrections department may define the same behavior differently. For example, although burglary rarely involves person-to-person behavior, it is treated as a violent offense in some places and can lead to a longer prison sentence;

– How context matters in the way violent or nonviolent crimes are treated by the justice system: Sometimes a behavior that would not normally be defined as a violent crime or result in a long prison term can mean a much longer term of imprisonment when a gun is involved; and

– The disconnection between the evidence of what works to make us safer and our current policies: People convicted of some of the most serious offenses—such as homicide or sex offenses—can have the lowest recidivism rates, but still end up serving long prison terms.

In Defining Violence, JPI recommends a series of strategies for policymakers that come out of our work with justice systems, and our view of the policy reforms that are needed to shift the approach to violence, and achieve more significant reductions in the use of incarceration. JPI recommends that policymakers build their justice reform proposals around these principles:

 Increase prevention and intervention approaches to violence;
 Expand diversion without stringent offense prohibitions;
 Reduce the number of offenses that can result in incarceration;
 Reduce the number of offenses that result in criminal and delinquency proceedings;
 Reduce the number of people on community supervision;
 Change laws, policies, and practices that affect length of stay;
 Increase restorative justice and trauma-informed approaches to violence;
 Use risk assessment tools in decision-making;
 Make prison and jail closures part of justice reform proposals; and
 Reduce gun availability

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As states pursue sentencing reform efforts to reduce prison populations and the federal government continues to grapple with comprehensive immigration reform, the private prison industry faces pressure to adapt to a shifting penal landscape that is moving toward alternatives to incarceration.

In response to these developments, the private prison industry began rebranding and expanding into subcontracted prisoner health care, forensic mental health treatment, and other “alternative” programming. In 2014, The American Friends Service Committee, Grassroots Leadership, and the Southern Center for Human Rights identified this emerging trend as the Treatment Industrial Complex (TIC).

In the present report, we offer an in-depth analysis of the community corrections segment. Community corrections refers to “front-end” alternatives to incarceration, such as probation, home arrest, diversion programs, and “back-end” reentry programs such as parole, halfway houses, and work release centers.

Nearly two-thirds of people involved in the criminal justice system are not held in prison or jail, but are instead monitored via community correction programs. At the end of 2014, more than 4.7 million adults were under probation or parole.

For prison corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, this represents a huge untapped market for privatization. Smaller companies are also springing up to meet the demand for community corrections programs and related services.

In this report, we examine four different components of community corrections that are being aggressively privatized:

1. Electronic monitoring through the use of GPS ankle monitors and other mobile surveillance technology

2. Day reporting centers for individuals to “check in” and/or participate in rehabilitative programs and services

3. Intermediate sanctions facilities as an alternative to revocation to prison for technical violations of the terms of probation or parole

4. Residential reentry centers, more commonly known as halfway houses.

Findings:

1. For-profit prison corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group are moving to expand their holdings in the community corrections arena. Both have acquired smaller companies that hold contracts for electronic monitoring, day reporting, intermediate sanctions, and residential reentry. Both have “rebranded” themselves as providers of rehabilitative services with a focus on recidivism reduction.

2. The niche market of community corrections is continually expanding, with new companies moving in to take advantage of lucrative government contracts and the opportunity to extract payment from those under supervision. Particularly in the field of electronic monitoring, the development of new technology and software has provided an entry point for new companies to compete for market share.

3. The profitization of community corrections poses a serious threat to the movement to end mass incarceration. Due to their extensive economic and political influence, corporations such as GEO Group and CCA are able to exploit reform efforts for their own financial gain. They can out-compete smaller, communitybased service providers for contracts. In addition, their extensive lobbying and campaign contributions are being leveraged to influence the direction of sentencing reform efforts and other policy decisions at the state and federal levels.

4. The pursuit of profit undermines the movement’s goals of shrinking the size and scope of the criminal punishment system. While the best practices in the area of community corrections emphasize tailoring interventions to provide the lowest level of security or surveillance necessary for the shortest amount of time, the incentive for private prison companies is to “widen the net” of people under ever-increasing levels of control.

The alternatives to incarceration movement should be resulting in a strong downward push: Reducing the number of people incarcerated, but also moving people more quickly off all forms of supervision. In effect, there should be a substantial number of people, based on risk assessments and other factors, who are completely free of the system and allowed to resume their lives.

This should be happening at the “front end,” where people are provided with appropriate services and accountability measures in lieu of either incarceration or probation. It should also be happening at the “back end” where individuals who have completed their sentences, are low risk of reoffending, and do not need additional support could be taken “off paper,” without cycling through a residential reentry center or being placed on electronic supervision.

However, the opposite appears to be happening. As prisons and detention centers fall out of favor, the number of people being placed on electronic monitoring and in post-release programs appears to be swelling.

This report offers an in-depth analysis of these issues, making the strong case for a nationwide examination of these trends to ensure that reform efforts are truly meeting their goal of providing alternatives to incarceration, not incarceration by another name.